Covid lockdown news – live: ‘Boris Johnson variant surging in UK’

The dramatic re-drawing of transport routes due to Covid is continuing – with a new ferry link between Holyhead in northwest Wales and Belfast, writes Simon Calder.

It is the first time the ports have been connected by a scheduled ferry service.

From 25 June to 18 July, Stena Line will sail at weekends between the two ports. In normal times, Holyhead has only one route, to Dublin.

Immigrants living in Britain haven’t had the best time recently. Granted, few people have had a pleasant time over the past year and a half; still, we have arguably had it worse. First there were the Brexit years, in which politicians tripped over themselves to tell voters how little they liked us.

Then, as things were starting to – finally, cautiously – calm down, the pandemic hit, writes Marie le Conte. Suddenly, we got stuck in this country, with no way of seeing our friends or families. Your violin may be small: after all, we chose to make this place our home, and no one forced us to move.

The surge in Covid-19 cases in Blackburn with Darwen looks to have peaked, with case rates stabilising for the first time in over a month, new figures suggest.

A total of 897 coronavirus cases were recorded in the local authority in the seven days to 10 June- the equivalent of 599.2 cases per 100,000 people.

Although this is up week-on-week from 548.4, it is below the figure of 666.7 recorded for the seven days to 7 June, which was the highest for the area since the middle of January.

Since 7 June, the seven-day rate of new cases has dropped on each successive day.

The figures have been calculated by the PA news agency from Public Health England data.

Blackburn with Darwen has been battling a sharp rise in cases since early May, driven by the spread of the Delta variant of Covid-19 that originated in India.

The government’s “unforgivable recklessness” with its approach to Britain’s borders during the pandemic is responsible for the surge in the variant first identified in India and the delay in lifting Covid restrictions, Labour has said.

Dubbing the Delta variant as “the Johnson variant”, the shadow home secretary said Boris Johnson’s “negligence and incompetence” had left the country facing “weeks more of restrictions — and yet more uncertainty” at a speech on Tuesday, writes Ashley Cowburn.

The remarks from Nick Thomas-Symonds came after the prime minister announced his decision to postpone Stage four of the roadmap out of lockdown until 19 July after a recent surge in infections and concern of the transmissibility of the Delta variant.

AstraZeneca says its antibody treatment for Covid-19 does not prevent symptoms in people who have been exposed to the virus.

The drug maker announced on Tuesday its treatment, called AZD7442, reduced the risk of developing symptomatic Covid by 33 per cent, compared to the placebo, but that this was not statistically significant.

Trial participants were adults over the age of 18 with confirmed exposure to a person who had coronavirus within the past eight days.

First minister Mark Drakeford has said Wales should not be “taking risks” by scrapping coronavirus restrictions while the number of people falling ill from the virus continues to rise.

Asked if Wales would be far behind England’s 19 July date for the lifting of Covid-19 rules, Mr Drakeford told PA: “We expect to see the number of people falling ill from coronavirus in Wales rise over the weeks ahead because of the Delta variant.

“We are at least in the fortunate position in Wales that our vaccination programme has already gone considerably further than the programmes in England or Scotland.

“We’re in a very different position than we would have been only a matter of months ago, and we need to protect the ground we’ve already gained by not taking risks that might undermine everything we’ve achieved together.”

A BBC journalist was shouted at and chased down the street by anti-lockdown protesters in Westminster.

Footage showed Nicholas Watt, Newsnight’s political editor, being accosted by several people during a demonstration outside Downing Street on Monday.

Our reporter Tom Batchelor has more details:

Scientists have warned overcrowded hospitals, exhausted health care workers, and other factors are creating “ideal conditions” for the emergence of a “superfungus” with the ability to resist drug treatment.

The first two cases of infection with the fungus Candida auris in Covid patients, described in the Journal of Fungi, was reported in a hospital in Salvador in the state of Bahia, Brazil.

My colleague Vishwam Sankaran explains more in the article below:

People eager to get their second dose of a coronavirus vaccine have been scrambling to move appointments forward amid a surge in the Delta coronavirus variant, after finding they can rebook for a closer time.

Some have said they have been able to cancel existing appointments for their second jab and sign up for another one several weeks earlier than originally planned.

My colleague Zoe Tidman has more details:

Just one per cent of hospital beds in England are occupied by patients with Covid-19, according to the head of the NHS in England.

Sir Simon Stevens told the NHS Confederation annual conference: “At the moment about one per cent of hospital beds in England are occupied by patients with a Covid diagnosis and the age distribution has really flipped as a result of vaccination.

“Back in January, it was 60/40 – 60 per cent of beds occupied by people over 65, 40 per cent (occupied by people) under 65.

“Now it’s flipped to 30/70, so it’s about 30 per cent occupied by people aged 65 and over 70 per cent by younger people whose prospects are much greater.”